Recently

Recently we learned that:

• I ordered the girls' dress shorts by the baker's dozen online.
• An emergency kit in my car involves pony tail holders, but no band aids.
• I either spend a lot of time in the shower, or my children only have "problems" when I'm in the shower.
• I am formulating an evil plan to not pack any dresses when we go on vacation.

Awesome.

And today Becca got sent to the office for disrupting Music class.  

By showing everyone her heinie.

Not like "full-on moon" (like Greg asked when we got home).  They were supposed to be sitting cross legged, and she was not, and kept laying back and lifting up her legs.

She did have on dress shorts, though she did make it to the van without them this morning.  Luckily Greg checked and went back in for some.

Her punishment?  No dresses for the rest of the week.

This from the girl who keeps asking why I don't have "ganam sigh" (Gangnam Style) on my phone.

Dinner Out

What does dinner out look like around here?  Well, let's start with lunch. 

That's Rebecca.  She has finished her hamburger.  Now she's eating ketchup on bread.  Awesome.  If we weren't watching, she'd be sticking her tongue in a cup of ketchup.  Because we've caught her doing that.

But on to dinner.  Don't let these pictures deceive you.  They were beasts this night.  It started when we were ordering and Becca started crawling around on the floor.  Once we finally ordered, I took her outside to talk, and she just ran away from me up and down the sidewalk.

I love those little pink fingernails.

At least we got out of the "I want dessert" whines by letting them have the Teddy Grahams for dessert.

Some dinners out go better than others.  I have to say that not having to cook and clean up generally win out over the stress of dealing with them when we're out.  When we come home during the week, cooking and cleaning up take up so much of the "free" time we have together.  I'd love to hear how other people cram in dinner and family time in that short time between getting home and going to bed.

Beauty and the Beast

We had actually decided to make a weekend of the zoo trip, and stay in a hotel for the weekend.  Greg had to work on Friday, so he drove down after work to meet us.

Before he got there, though, the girls were demanding dinner.

The closest thing to us was essentially a sports bar.  But they had outside roof dining, and I thought it would be fun.

So I took 3 kids to a sports bar.  Got lots of stares.  There weren't many other kids there.  Wait, there weren't any other kids there.

We sat outside, but not in the shade, and the sun was right in my eyes.  And the only chairs outside are tall bar height chairs.  

See, this just keeps getting better.

Then my tired kids who refused to take a nap start whining.  And crying.  Julie:  "I want to eat inside!" Emma was just so tired she put her head down on the table.  And Becca hates being trapped in a chair.  And someone (I honestly can't remember who now) just kept screaming, "I want chicken nuggets!"  I got some chips and dip as an appetizer, hoping food would help improve morale, but it just seemed to make things worse.

Anyhow, in the midst of all this, I snapped this picture with my phone.  And I just love, love, love it.  Love the sun streaming down.  Love how serene she looks.

Love the fact that it masks the beastliness that was really going on when it was taken.

Yeah, that.

The girls were better today.  I'll give them that.

But there was still plenty of this:

The girls came home from school today growling "en-oh-hollow."  They wouldn't tell us what it meant... or they didn't know.  Some quick thinking by Greg reminded us that they had a Spanish lesson today.  And thanks to the wonders of Google:

enojado:

adj. angry, cross; displeased; vexed 

 

v. anger, annoy, displease 

 

v. lose one's temper, get angry 

Keeping it real.

I started working on a post catching up on all the photos from the wedding.  But right now?  I just don't feel like it.  I'm so exhausted/fed up/overwhelmed/bitter/cranky.  The girls are testing every last nerve.  Sunday was awful.  Today wasn't much better.

They are whiny.  They don't listen.  They scream or shriek when they don't get their way.  They hit each other.  Today, Emma pushed Julie down the last three stairs (backwards).

I am trying not to raise my voice or spank them ... because that's the exact behavior I don't want them mirroring...  But I'm at my wit's end.  Mostly they just laugh at us.  Or scream.

Perhaps I'm missing having the support of our family when we were home for the wedding.  I miss my parents.  I miss my brothers.  I miss my sisters-in-law.  I'm bitter when I hear about other peoples' parents "taking the kids for the weekend."  I feel like we never get a break.  For as much time as Greg and I get to see each other, we barely spend any time together.

I'm exhausted, and can't remember what a full night of sleep feels like.  Even after one of us falls asleep in their room every night, there are usually 2 in our bed by morning.  When all 3 are in our bed, I get minimal sleep, and there's usually a fight involved.  On those particularly fun nights, I get kicked in the head.  Lately, I've taken to sleeping on the couch, since it gives Greg and the visitors more room.

And as I hit submit, at least one of them is kicking the wall upstairs.

Ladies Day

Last week, I took a day off from work and we had a ladies day.  In the morning, we went to a moms of multiples play date at Krispy Kreme.

making their cheese faces

Then, like everyone does on a good Ladies Day, we went to Target.  For new toothbrushes.  Julie picked out "Tigger the Tiger" and Emma and Becca picked princess (sigh) toothbrushes.  

It was way past nap time by that point, but I decided to push it and went into JoAnn's.  Oh, what a bad idea.  They were AWFUL.  Running all over the store screaming.  And I only have two hands.  They were quite a spectacle.  I tried to ignore it, I tried threatening ("Do you want to go out to lunch or not?"), I tried dragging Becca toward the front of the store with Julie following screaming only to get to the front of the store and find out I had no idea where Emma was.  It was bad.  So bad that the lady in front of us in line to checkout let us go ahead of her.  And then, at the checkout, Emma runs out the door.  I almost lost it.  Luckily, she ran right back in the entrance door and back around to the registers.  But oh was I mad.  In the end, I knew they were tired.  I knew they needed a nap.  Lesson learned.

We did go out to lunch, and then headed home.  They were asleep in the car within about 10 minutes.

My little consumer has a fit

(Greg was filming, I was driving)

Mangoes

In case I have mistakenly given the impression that our lives are all triplet-pigtails and triplet-sunshine, let me tell you about Mother's Day weekend.

I was sick and slept more than I can remember sleeping in a long time. I started feeling funny on Friday afternoon, so when dinner time came and I wasn't hungry, I knew fun times were in store.

I was still functional at that point, though, so we took the girls to eat outside at Panera, and to see the fountains at the shopping center it's in. Then we took our first family trip to Barnes and Noble to play with the trains ... and, um, all of the other toys that other people had previously taken out of boxes. They had lots of trains in boxes still, and Julie kept telling me "that's a pretty choo choo train". They also fell in love with the magnetic drawing boards (considering these for our next long car trip) and the books that have all the buttons on the side to make noises (yeah, not considering these at all). We had to wrestle the drawing boards away from them to leave, but they did score a new Curious George book.

I went to sleep as soon as we put the girls in bed, which technically meant I was asleep before they were. I woke up Saturday feeling just awful and spent most of the morning laying on the couch and dozing on and off. When the girls went up for naps, I moved from the couch to the bed.

I started to feel better on Saturday night, but was still exhausted and went to bed shortly after the girls did.

I had a brief window of feeling ok on Sunday morning, which was nice so the girls could take me to the zoo for Mother's Day. It was fun, but the girls kept acting like they had somewhere else to be - they wanted to see the animal, but only briefly before saying "bye bye". Part of it may be that we went to see the "loud" monkeys and I think it freaked them out.

Oh, and they did in fact remember that the playground was there. They kept asking about seeing the turtles, and I can't help but wonder if it's because the playground is right next to the turtles.

About half way in to the zoo, Emma started asking about "mangoes.". I couldn't for the life of me figure out what she was talking about. A couple more times throughout the zoo: "Mangoes? Mangoes?". Finally we come up to the duck pond, and she starts talking about mangoes again. I'm thinking "mangoes... mongoose? goose?" but clearly I'm not getting it ... And then it hit me - flamingoes! I don't know where they come up with this stuff!

We had lunch at the airport again and watched the planes. So far, mother's day is just fine. While they were napping, I started going through all of their summer clothes. It's quite a chore. In the meantime, it's chaos as I try to organize things and Greg tries to decode my system to find the girls clothes in the morning. I kept working even after they woke up from nap. By the time I finally went downstairs a bit before dinner time, the girls were in rare form, just screaming and whining and misbehaving. It continued through dinner, and Rebecca in particular was determined to do every bad thing she could think of, from climbing on the table to banging on the table to trying to pick her cup up with a fork and spoon to sticking her fork in her milk.

By the time dinner was over, I had a full on head ache, starting at my neck and moving up the back of my head. It was all I could do to take some ibuprofen and lay back down on the couch.

Where I stayed until Monday morning.

So by Monday, I feel completely lazy and guilty for making Greg do everything this weekend, including bath time and bed time on Sunday night. The house is a mess, and I feel like a complete failure for not getting anything done. The girls' clothes mess is still all over the bed and Greg had to sleep in the guest room on Sunday. And I'm fed up with the girls' behavior and whining and my seeming inability to do anything about it.

There are days that I wouldn't wish this on anyone.

Pictures from a lazy Sunday

I call it a lazy Sunday, because we didn't do anything that involved all of us going out, but with 3 little ladies, there's never really a lazy day around here.

Grandma brought this skirt. Emma had it on before you could say "pink."


Then Emma had a moment.




I think it was over these little pink baskets I got from the Target $1 spot. Somebody had all of them. Emma wanted one.

Eventually she got one, and then they all wanted the "stickers" from them. And of course they were the stickers that don't come off without ripping.

Emma didn't mind too much.


Love this pic of Emma and grandma.


Julie was working on her pout. For a future movie star role.


Until she got Grandma to read to her. She had to keep her sunglasses on, though. Grandma was instructed to wear some, too.


Oh, those sweet Becca eyes!



And then we spent some time racing back and forth between the side window and the windows behind the couch to watch daddy mow the grass.



The girls got to spend Monday at home with grandma, before we had to take her back to the airport. Or, according to Emma, just "pawt." She got really mad when she didn't get to get out at the airport. Becca and Julie were asleep after not taking a nap.

Saturday's Non-nap

I slept through most of it, but the end results were:

-Becca had no shirt, and actually napped for a little while.

-Julie emerged with no shirt, pants, but no diaper and no nap.

-Emma emerged with no shirt, no pants, no diaper, a wet bed, and no nap.

When they don't nap, they tend to crash later, like in the car on the way to dinner. We're planning to move nap times to pack n plays and separate the three of them for naps. It's just out of control, and I know they're just egging each other on.

To make up for Saturday...

...the girls were terrors on Sunday. Terrorizing us, terrorizing each other. Whining, crying. Not listening. Not sitting in time out.

Sigh.

Saturday, they wore us out in a good way.

Sunday, they wore us out in bad way.

But I did get a few pictures of them being cute for a moment. Julie and Becca were playing choo choo train, and then Emma decided she wanted in, too.

(Note, it was a musical train... See the tamborine ("drum") and the drum beating stick? Oh, they love to beat that thing.)